Posted on 27 May 2012

Many people who have been following online marketing news for the past few weeks know that Google has stated that social linking will have an effect on how a page ranks in search results. This has of course, generated a lot of interest in the topic of social linking. Those who use social media already are wondering what they could do to integrate their SEO efforts together with social media. Those who don’t are now rushing to create accounts on Google +, Twitter and Facebook for their businesses and websites.

Search engines using the social media standing of a website as one of the factors in determining its page rank shouldn’t surprise anyone. Whether you like it or not, social networking sites have become a powerful tool where users share information with each other and this includes the websites that they’ve visited. It’s only normal that search engines look at how popular a site is getting on a social network.

Another word that is often used in online marketing circles is “authority”. Being an authority online means being a excellent source of information on a certain niche. An authority site is one that receives a lot of traffic and has shown that it can give users what they want on a consistent basis. This is different from a website that goes viral and gets a few hundred thousand visitors who go to it and look at a funny picture or video and then progressively disappear as the popularity fades away.

But how do you combine social media with your overall online marketing strategy and use it to truly become an authority in your niche? If you heard some self proclaimed gurus claim that they have a strategy to become an authority quickly and easily, then you should know they’re not telling the whole truth about the matter. Building an authority site is difficult and involves a lot of work. It also involves a lot of time. Remember, a site can’t be considered to be authoritative in its niche just because it receives a sudden spike in traffic over a few days. This popularity among visitors needs to be consistent. So you should opt for gradual growth.

What you want is for your content to be widely shared on social media by the user’s own actions. People have to come to your site, see some of the content and then decide to share it with others, giving an indication that they’ve found it interesting. Self-promotion efforts, such as linking to a blog post that you’ve made on your Facebook fan page, will not lead to your site being authoritative in itself. You can spend all day publishing news stories on your feed and providing links to every page on your site, but if nobody shares it, you’re really out of luck.

There’s a whole lot more to it and there are differences between the various social networks. Later, we will take a look at how you can leverage Facebook and Twitter to get your site the respect that it can have in the online world.

Posted on 15 May 2012

In social media marketing, there are several ways for marketers and advertisers to get their messages in front of their buyers. One of them includes creating a social media page or profile, then using it as a vehicle to deliver advertising messages to users who have shown interest in the company. In order to increase the usefulness of the social media page, users are encouraged to share the content found in it and to display that they’re subscribed to the page on their profile. But this works only in a limited way. Therefore, there is another method of social media advertising that is widely used and that is including small ad messages while the user is browsing the social media site, no matter what page they are on.

This is a strategy employed by Facebook, however Google has a different approach. With their Google + service, Google agrees on the fact that when users are busy socializing with others, this would not be the right time to display ads to them. For example, if a user is busy looking at funny pictures of their friends dog, displaying ads for a plumbing company will usually just irritate the user, unless by some type of coincidence that user also has a clogged toilet.

According to Google, ads are more useful if they’re displayed to a user showing “commercial intent” by searching for a product or service. But this will not simply result in the typical “Adwords” ads being displayed, in addition to organic search results. Google plans to integrate social media into its search engine. Thus, if someone looks for a plumber, Google will first display social recommendations from friends, if the user has one that recommended a particular plumbing service on social media. This actually integrates advertising into user generated content very well, without invading the user’s personal updates by including ads where users would not be interested in seeing them at all.

According to information collected from online marketing news providers, this is a strategy that works. Google is currently reporting that ads which have social annotations have much better click through rates. On average, improvement of CTR is from 5% to 10% versus standard ads.

For users, it means a better experience as the ads not only contain promotional material, but also a personal mention from their friends. For marketers and business owners, it also changes the game somewhat. For those who don’t use Google + now would be a good time to start. Create your page, get it out there. Make sure people are talking about it. And of course, if you want good results, then you better make sure that they’re talking about it in a positive way. The more social your company is, the better products it provides (generating good feedback from users), the more effective your standard search ad campaign is actually going to be.

Posted on 10 December 2011

If you take a look at recent online marketing news, you will see that using pay per click advertising is growing online. In that past few years, this use has grown steadily. One of the reasons behind this growth is the fact that many small businesses are now using PPC advertising to get more visitors to their websites and customers to buy their products. If you want to get started as a small business user, then here are some tips that you can use to launch your first successful campaigns:

Take Advantage of Free Offers

Many PPC advertising service providers give free ad credit to members who join. You can find these free offers simply by looking online. Some web hosts also offer free advertising credit to clients that use their services. For example, you can get a $100 Google Adwords credit from many web hosting providers. Making use of these credits will allow you to start advertising at no cost on various platforms and see which ones will be the most suitable for your business and bring you the best quality traffic.

Don’t Forget to Target Your Ads

This is one of the most important aspects of PPC advertising: geo targeting, which means only serving your ads to web users that are in a certain defined geographic region. There are several uses of this: obviously, if you have a local business that only serves a certain area, you will want to limit your clicks to come from that area. Anything else will simply be a waste of money. Even if you do business globally, you may want to limit the countries that you target for your advertising, mainly due to the fact that there’s a much higher amount of fraud and poor quality traffic coming from certain countries.

Some PPC services also allow you to choose specific sites or groups of sites that your ad will appear on. They also have demographic targeting, meaning you can make your ads appear on sites that will be mostly visited by the demographics that are the most likely to purchase something from your business, thus making your traffic more useful for you.

Use Keywords Wisely

If you advertise on search services, like Google or Bing, then keywords for PPC are as important as for SEO. Even more so, as you will be paying for each click. Be sure to do your keyword research in thoroughly before and carefully select the keywords you will want to target. Avoid keywords that will be too broad, as they will result in getting traffic from people who may not necessarily be looking for what you’re offering. If your business sells clothes and accessories, instead of targeting general keywords like “fashion”, you may want to target more specific ones like “Diesel jeans” or “discount handbags”, etc. Basically, you need to think as one of your customers and target keywords that they would be most likely to search for.